The term “wheel” is used in the following disclosure and claims to include rims, tires, and rim-tire assemblies. As the invention can be used to support wheels, tires, and rims, these terms can be used interchangeably within the intended scope of the claims.
The numbers of back injuries to employees in the automotive service has been increasing dramatically due to the increasing weight of tires and rims, particularly with large SUVs and trucks. In the process of servicing brakes or rotating tires, a vehicle is raised to 4 or 5 feet from the ground by a hoist. The wheel is taken off of the car and dropped to the ground. It is either left there or maneuvered to a tire-changing apparatus or some other device. The wheel eventually needs to be picked up off the ground, lifted up to the proper height, and replaced on the car. This requires a service person to twist and bend while lifting and positioning as much as 100 pounds. As a result, worker's compensation claims for back injuries from such activities have been skyrocketing.
There have been a number of attempts to overcome this problem. U.S. Pat. No. 5,618,228 discloses a holding fixture for a wheel in which a vertically oriented triangular plate has three bolts at its corners which pass through corresponding holes in the wheel frame and three nuts hold the wheel from falling off of the bolts. Although the concept of hanging the wheel is advantageous, the need to align three holes in a wheel assembly over three bolts that are loosely inserted through three holes in the triangular plate presents considerable challenges to even the most skilled service person.
Canadian Patent Application No. 2,402,711 discloses a wheel hanging apparatus consisting of a clamp that couples to automotive hoist at a height approximately the same as that of a wheel of a vehicle disposed on a hoist. A single pin projecting from the end of a pivotal arm serves to engage a stud hole on the wheel assembly and hold the wheel in an elevated position.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2003/0155475 by Hicks discloses a tubular wheel hanger that hangs from an automotive hoist. The wheel hanger has a U-shaped section that fits over a hoist arm and a hook at the end of a long arm on which hangs the wheel. Because the U-shaped section loosely fits over the hoist arm, no variation in size of the hoist can be tolerated.
The foregoing devices have a common shortcoming in that they cannot be safely stored when not in use, thereby posing a potential threat of injury to a worker who accidentally runs into the device.